Technically all FF games have a large connecting land mass. :P

I would argue art style for 7, 8, and 9 and the fact that they didn't actually push the PS1's graphics to it's limits. Look at Chrono Cross (another game by Squaresoft). It looks graphically much better than any of the Final Fantasies. Look at the Resident Evil series. Same thing, Resident Evil looks better. Same with Parasite Eve. 

Before Square had a great balance between graphics and gameplay, where they seem to have completely ditched one for the other now. 

That's just not true. You can see a clear progression between 7-9 and what what possible for them at the time. I mean look at the elaborate CGIs. Those certainly took a lot of resources to make while being less than essential to the gameplay. FFIX is absolutely demanding for a PS1 game. The polygon count for the characters alone was great. Go back and play them again and you will agree.

Same goes for the SNES and PS2 games. both FFVI and FFXII were pretty much the best of what was possible on their respective consoles. There might have been a handful of games that looked better but that's not saying that Square's focus  was not primarily on visual presentation. On the PS3 games they even sacrificed fps for the best look. Look at their CGI, tech demos and movies.

Graphics were always the strongest focus for FF. It's Square's flagship and they treat it as such.

I will not be surprised when they sacrifice resolution and fps for visual fireworks in FFXV.

Add onto the fact that the battle system was really boring. It sounded interesting on paper, but in practice it was the worst FF battle system to date. Either that, or they just messed it up, as Square tends to do with everything.

All this waiting for FFXV, I hope FFXVI is ready for this gen... (Hopefully had a few years of development now)

Yes the CGI was elaborate, but that has nothing to do with the majority of a games graphics. Did it cost resources? No, because all a game has to render and process during the cut scene is the cutscene. What it took was MEMORY on the CD. That's why PS1 games had a staple of being 2 or 3 CDs long.  

Also, I agree there is progression with every entry. They were trying to get used to creating 3D worlds (the biggest change to video games in video game history). Just because there is progression however doesn't mean something is being pushed to it's limit. As a matter of fact it kind of points in the other direction.

As far as VI, I don't think it was the graphics it was pushing. It looked like a regular Snes game. There were Snes and Genesis games that were creating 3d effects to them. Even if we just go off of sprite graphics A Link To The Past looked visually better and had an open world as well. We won't even get into the fact that at the time a Tales Of (Phantasia) had much better graphics and was also open world. That's right, a Tales Of game completely graphically destroyed Final Fantasy. What VI gave us was one of the biggest worlds known at the time, one of the biggest parties which included the mascot Mog, and a musical score that was jaw dropping. It also gave us the ability to use whatever magic we wanted just by learning the ability through an equiped Esper and the ability to equip any Esper to a person to summon while before a summoner was a class all its own. It brought so much innovation to the jrpg that it's insane! It's arguably better than the materia system. 

Graphics were never the strongest focus. They always wanted good graphics, don't get me wrong, but it was never their strongest focus until around the PS2.

Thats just not true, you have been saying quite a few untrue things about the series. FF has always been a very very demanding graphics heavy game. That has always kinda been their calling card. Back in the ps1 with FF7, FF8 and FF9 its was a pretty big deal making prerendered backgrounds and placing user controlled polygon models in there. That was cutting edge at the time. And they evolved the tech by integrating the models into the CGI by FF8 and FF9. Something no one else was ever able to do on the PS1, Well, until these guys that made fear effect came and worked some visual magic.

In hindsight a lot of their efforts may look unimpressive since you may have forgotten what everything else looked like back then, but honestly if you really think FF has not always been about the best graphics and art design and music of any time a FF game was being made, then you do not know FF. 

I am very curious about this game. I've only ever played FF3 from this series on DS (fantastic) but given how much Xenoblade blew my mind and the fact it was apparently from many of the people who set up the basic pillars of the Final Fantasy design.

Also those twink boys are hot, I hope there is a group sex scene for them! (Joke. Sadly this isn't Bioware.)


Hopefully there will at least be options for 'underwear only armour'.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't static backgrounds that were prerendered LESS graphically taxing than actually rendering 3D backgrounds. It's basically just adding a picture with the commands that you character can walk on this part of the picture, but not another part. Remember, the backgrounds didn't move (except for the occasional scrolling from left to right and up and down) in these pre rendered states, just the size of the character. 

Art design and music? Yes

Graphics? No. 

Those Pre-rendered backgrounds was why FF7 would have been impossible to do on the N64. That's also why FF games came on 4 discs. And they were not mostly static, most of them were like GIFs. 

And again, at the time, that was kinda a very big deal. That was deemed cutting edge graphics back then. resident evil did it, Dino crisis did it, fear effect did it... basically all the games that were considered some of the best looking games of the PS era. Only really pretty games that didn't do it were GT, MGS, and Vahtant Story.